This week we are asking big questions. As Bruno Latour
quotes in his chapter titled "Crisis",
"Nietzsche said that the big
problems were like cold baths: you have to get out as fast as you got in."
(19). And that is exactly how I feel about this week's readings. Latour and
Levitt force us to question everything we know about our compartmentalized
lives... I was left somewhat confused about being a truly interdisciplinary
student myself. Is it a good thing to combat a question with multiple perspectives, or am I wearing myself too thin? Am I a pleasantly interdisciplinary student, or do I just know a little bit about a lot of things? Latour's work was difficult to understand, which is why I never
understood why we write these blog posts prior to our class discussions. My understanding
of Crisis is that Latour was trying
to come to terms with the hybridity of doing interdisciplinary work in a world
that loves to fit things into neat categories. The restrictiveness of
categories is evident by the "critics'" reactions: "the critics
have developed three distinct approaches to talking about our world:
naturalization, socialization and deconstruction." (5). And these three
categories cannot be mixed within research. This concept doesn't make much
sense to me personally, but I'm sure I'll understand it better after our class
discussion. However, I do understand how categorizing research and writing into
specific unwavering categories can hurt the practice; mainly because categories
not only simplify the work being done, but also shape the way readers approach the
work itself. In social media terms: If I tag my object study posts as #history #materialculture, students searching for taxidermy or Philadelphia history might completely miss me.
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| Do we live in a #hashtag world? Image Courtesy of {http://www.becomeablogger.com/22120/wordpress-categories-and-tags/} |
Laura Levitt expresses similar distaste for categorization in
her essay "In the Potter’s Hands: Precarium or the Holocaust Object."
Levitt looks at Edmund de Waal and emotional attachment to objects. I say
emotional attachment, but it's about more than that.. Levitt describes the true
power of collecting. For example, Levitt's piece is just like the articles
described in the beginning of Latour's piece. She has a single thread of {collecting and Holocaust objects} which intertwines through narratives about de
Waal's work, social justice, and emotional trauma. She writes beyond the
boundaries of simply "history" or "material culture
studies" or even "politics". Levitt also expresses the
importance of the narratives behind historical collections and the arbitrary
value of those collections. By continuing to tell the story of what happened
during the Holocaust, we are able to participate in the "labor of doing
justice" (9). Meaning, by looking at the curated Holocaust objects, we are
in a sense returning the objects to
their rightful owners. We are giving the objects provenance. I've never thought
about objects in this way before, and I liked the idea of visitors and viewers participating
in something that goes beyond the museum doors.
As for my object study on Grip the raven, I'm hoping to write
beyond the boundaries of simply history, public history, or even material
culture. What I am most excited for is to not only tell the story of a
taxidermy bird in Philadelphia, but the story of taxidermy itself. Why was
there such a boom of taxidermy in the 1800s? Why do we even want taxidermy
animals in our homes? The craftsmanship behind taxidermy is what really
interests me here. I believe that the taxidermists of the mid-1800s were
participating in a craft that goes far beyond just working with your hands -
they too were breaking categorical boundaries. They were breathing new life
into creatures who had lost theirs already. Whether the animals were
"trophies" or friends, they became immortal with the tools of the
taxidermist. I will dive into this more deeply in the coming days!
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